Summary : St. Charles, MO, before fireworks show. A blue ball (??) of lightstreaked across the sky, I'd say east to west. There was no noise.It just disappeared after about 5 seconds. It did not change direction, justdissappeared.

Friday, 7/4/97, approximately 9:15pm, St. Charles, MO. This is about 30 minutes from downtown St. Louis.My family and I (as well as probably 30,000 others) were at the St. Charles riverfront to watch fireworks. It had just started to get dark and we knew the fireworks would be starting any time. I was looking into the sky to the south of where I was sitting and I saw a light streak across the sky. It went in an east-west direction. It was pretty bright. It was blue, maybe blue-green. It made no noise at all. It traveled in a straight path for probably at least fives econds.

Then it just disappeared. It did not change direction, it just disappeared. It didn't even fade out. It was obviously not a firework, but I didn't know what it was. I figured itmust have been a firework, or a plane on fire, or an asteroid or something. But it was really too bright for any of that. It didn't actually have a tail, it was more of a streak of light. Fireworks started 15 minutes later.

I am a computer systems analyst. My girlfriend is a cash dept.supervisor. My father is an engineer for McDonnell Douglas. My friend is a cab driver. We all saw it and asked 'what the hell was that?'.

Today, I heard reports that others had seen it in Collinsville, IL. But nothing was said about in St. Louis/St. Charles.

((NUFORC Note: Many reports of this incident, which was very interesting. First reported by an FAA Air Traffic Controller in the tower at the Paducah, KY, airport, who witnessed the light descending vertically down in the northern sky. PD))